Tuesday, December 12, 2017

Invisible LMS: the LMS is not dead, but it needs to be invisible – front it with a chatbot

Good is almost invisible. As the most powerful piece of
back-end, consumer software ever built, it hides behind a simple letterbox.
Most successful interfaces follow this example of Occam’s Razor – the minimum
number of entities to reach your goal.

Sadly, the LMS does the opposite. Often difficult to access
and navigate, it looks like something from the 90s – that’s because it is
something from the 90s. The clue is in the middle word ‘management’. The LMS is
largely about managing learners and learning, not engagement. But there’s a breakthrough.
What we are seeing now are Learning ENGAGEMENT Systems. It is not that the
functionality of an LMS is flawed but its UI/UX is most certainly flawed.
Basically repositories, the LMS is insensitive to performance support, learning
embedded in workflow and makes people do far too much work. They put obstacles
in the way of learning and fail the most basic demands for data, as they are
trapped in the hideously inadequate SCORM standard.

First up - we must stop seeing employees as learners. No one
calls anyone a learner in real life, no one sees themselves as learners in real
life. People are people, doing a job. It’s why I’m allergic to the ‘lifelong
learning’ evangelists who often see life as a lifelong course, or life coaches
– get a life, not a coach.

So how could we make the LMS more invisible, while retaining
and improving functionality?

First up get rid of the multiple sign-ons (to be fair most
have), nested menus, lists of courses and general noise. Talk to people. When
people want to know something they usually ask someone. So front your LMS/VLE
with a chat function. Most young people have already switched to messaging,
away from email and even traditional social media.

This is the real screen of a real person, she’s 19. There
isn’t even a browser or phone icon – it’s largely messaging. Dialogue is our
most natural form of communication, so front learning with dialogue. A chat
interface also dramatically reduces cognitive overload. This is why it is so popular
– ease of use and seems natural.

Meet Otto

Otto, from Learning Pool is the best example I’ve seen of
this. Ask a question and either a human or the back-end LMS (now invisible)
will respond and find the relevant answer, resource or learning experience. It
can access simple text answers, pieces of e-learning and/or external resources.
So, when someone comes across something they don’t understand or need to know
for whatever reason, they have an opportunity to simply ask and the chatbot
will respond, either with a quick answer or a flow of questions that try to
pinpoint what you really need. If the system can’t deliver it knows someone who
can.

It’s not just the LMS that can be made invisible, it’s the
whole structure of ‘learning’ – the idea that learning is something separate,
done in courses and formal. Training gets a bad rap for a reason – it’s all a
bit, well, dull and inflexible. At one point in my life I point blank refused
to be in a room with round tables, a flipchart, coloured pens and a bowl of
mints for inspiration. The sooner that becomes invisible the better. Book webinar on chatbots in learning here.